Vaio VGN AR61S - Data recovery from hard drive

[Fergus49]

Hi,

After around 12 years my Sony Vaio VGN AR61S died on me and I am trying to recover photos etc from the hard drives which I have removed, see pictures below.

I bought the lead pictured below but when connected to my new laptop the hard drive runs but there's no data there. Where am i going wrong?

[IamNic]

Hello @Fergus49,

did you connect both USB connectors to your new notebook?

The thinner lead is for power, the thicker lead is for data.

The harddrive needs both to work.

- Nic

[Blencogo]

Hi Fergus49 and welcome.

Are these the original hard drives?

If so, data recovery may prove difficult because Sony made the strange decision with the top-end AR-Series Vaios to set up the two hard drives in a RAID 0 configuration - presumably to increase the speed of read/write to the drives. This means data is written to both the drives at once with a ‘stripe’ saved to drive 1 and the next ‘stripe’ to drive 2. This means the data on the pair of drives can only be read by a PC fitted with a similar RAID Controller capable of stitching together the 128KB ‘stripes’ placed alternatively on drives 1 and 2.

I cannot be sure that your Vaio was using RAID 0 but it sounds likely.

To read a pair of RAID 0 drives you will need the original linking cable between the two drives and a PC running a compatible RAID 0 array to read and recover the data. I am unsure if a data recovery business can offer this service.

Where do you live - as it happens, I have a 2007 VGN-AR31S in RAID 0 somewhere that I think still works.

[Fergus49]

Thanks for the reply, I now understand why I have two hard drives! 

So, the only way to recover the data is to install the hard drives into a similar laptop?

I live near Berkhamsted?